This is so cool


Some fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey are clearly having some fun.

The monolith was found in Utah where Mormons settled. The Mormon cosmology also involves worlds other than the Earth that are inhabited. Could this monolith be a sign to Earthlings that Mormonism is the one true religion?

In the second video you can see that this monolith, unlike the rectangular slab in the film, has a triangular cross-section that points to a crack in the cliff face. Maybe, like the signal in the film that told us where to go in the universe to make contact, this is telling us that the secret is embedded in that crack in the cliff face.

We need to send a mission into that gap.

Comments

  1. says

    The object is apparently metal, so does that mean it’s not a -lith?

    Ought to be easy enough to tell if it’s solid, and how it was manufactured. Someone put a lot of work into it.

    Another person believes they found it on google maps and terraserver so it ought to be possible to see when it appeared.

  2. Reginald Selkirk says

    The exact location is now public, and the object has been there since 2016. Look around and you can find articles.

    In the second video you can see that this monolith, unlike the rectangular slab in the film, has a triangular cross-section that points to a crack in the cliff face…

    Possibly meaningful, possibly not.
    A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon
    See in particular the section on apophenia.

    … As the participants started searching for the hidden object, on the dirt floor, were little random scraps of wood.
    How could that be a problem!?
    It was a problem because three of the pieces made the shape of a perfect arrow pointing right at a blank wall. It was uncanny. It had to be a clue. The investigators stopped and stared at the wall and were determined to figure out what the clue meant and they were not going one step further until they did. The whole game was derailed…

  3. quotetheunquote says

    Umm, if the artist or artists were trying to for some kind of visually rhetorical link to TMA-1, they failed miserably. This object doesn’t even come *close* to having the correct 1:4:9 proportions!

    (I suspect one of two possibilities: 1. the people responsible have never even heard of 2001, and the association is entirely accidental, or 2. they do know they film/book, and just aren’t sufficiently geeky to appreciate things like ratios.)

  4. xohjoh2n says

    @3 neither did the one in the film because Kubrick decided 1:4:9 just didn’t look cinematic enough.

  5. says

    I wonder if I went around “losing” authentic pirate treasure maps that said there was gold buried under the foundations of QAnoner’s houses -- would that be unethical or humor?

  6. bmiller says

    Marcus: It would be even more amusing if your maps pointed people to Mar-A-Lago? I bet even the Secret Service couldn’t deal with a ravenous horde of cell phone equipped game players!

  7. DonDueed says

    I bet the late Tony Hillerman could have woven a wonderful mystery around this thing for Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee to solve.

  8. Mano Singham says

    I read in a book about the film that the monolith was made of plexiglass (I think) that was painted black but was highly susceptible to pick up dirt, fingerprints, and other marks that spoiled the smooth look and so had to be handled really, really carefully and protected whenever it was not being filmed.

  9. robert79 says

    The things that really sticks out to me is that the area around the “monolith” even looks like a 1960’s film set. Flat floor, vertical walls, a sci-fi reddish alien landscape color… If I’d only seen the photo, and not the video, I’d have thought it was just an old indoor film set with painted/decorated walls. I don’t know the area, how natural are conditions like that?

  10. flex says

    From an article I read about it yesterday, it was constructed with a light metal frame and sheet metal screwed to it. The screws locations are apparently pretty obvious in the second video. I don’t know if the metal is steel or aluminum, but it must have been packed in and set up.

    The interesting question to me is how deep does it go. If it’s only a foot or two down in sand, that’s an easy installation. If it’s even six inches into rock, that’s a lot of effort. But I would guess that it’s a foot down in sand and that after the frame and two sides were in place, the lower part of the inside was filled with local rock for ballast. Then the third side was screwed on.

    If I was to take a guess, it was probably the location for some amateur pron film, and left behind because it was too awkward to disassemble. No one wants to admit they were filming without a permit, so no one is taking any responsibility (and probably laughing about the whole situation now). Who wants to go through their porn collection looking for a 2001 pastiche?

  11. kestrel says

    @robert79, #9: First how appropriate the number 9 is to this… but second, I’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the planet and that is perfectly normal for that area. I’ve heard that this was an art installation and that would not surprise me in the least. Also, that part of the planet was used for a ton of movies because it does look so surreal. As far as that being the way things look there, I must have a thousand photos of myself or others throughout my life in that area and they all look pretty much like this does. Again, perfectly normal.

    I’m saying it’s not aliens…. but, it’s not aliens. It’s humans.

  12. fentex says

    About thirty ears ago some friends of mine built a monolith as a present for another friend.

    It was about 8 feet tall, made of lightish wood and lacquered jet black with a hard polyurethane seal. It really looked the business.

    He woke up one morning with it at the foot of his bed.

  13. Ridana says

    In what I’ve read, they’ve emphasized how difficult it would be to get to this site on foot. If that’s true, it’s a rather odd place for an art installation, unless the helicopter pilot or passenger were told to “discover” it.

    For some reason, the first thing that popped into my head was the Scientologists, who have erected all sorts of weird markers like this in remote places for their secret purposes.

  14. Reginald Selkirk says

    @14 The BBC article says it is riveted together, not screwed. Either way, that is a very earthly technology.

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